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New Music Concert Listings - United Kingdom

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Following highly successful productions of John Adams’s Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic, ENO presents the London stage premiere of the American composer’s controversial ‘docu-opera’ about the killing of a Jewish-American tourist during the hijacking of a Mediterranean cruise liner by Palestinian militants.

Alice Goodman’s eloquently poetic and dispassionately even-handed libretto mixes Biblical and Koranic references with real and imagined accounts of what happened on board. Adams’s intensely expressive score captures the private thoughts and emotions of individuals caught up in the complexities of a political and religious conflict that still defies solution. More of a meditation in the style of a Bach Passion than a conventional operatic drama, the result is an utterly compelling and unique piece of theatre.

Tom Morris, co-director of the National Theatre’s War Horse, makes his opera directing debut, while Baldur Brönnimann, who conducted ENO’s Lost Highway and Le Grand Macabre, applies his contemporary expertise to what many regard as Adams’s finest opera.

Despite its chamber scale – this programme contains an embarrassment of riches, a lucky dip of superbly crafted chamber pieces from the last 30 years, full of contrast, some tiny, some substantial, performed by a crack quintet of BCMG soloists.

Some of these works are memorials or tributes; many of them use forms or techniques from music of the past – fugues, chaconnes, canons, inventions; some come from a fascination with past composers. Knussen’s Upon One Note distorts the rhythms and pitches of Purcell’s five part fantasia; Barry’s two minute Aeneas and Dido revisits Purcell’s opera as the composer “felt that Aeneas needed to be given his due”; Machaut can be found lurking behind Birtwistle’s Double Hocket; whilst Philip Cashian’s blistering Caprichos explores the dark, nightmarish world depicted in Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos etchings.

The performance of Aldo Clementi’s Berceuse is a tribute in itself – to the last of the great Italian 20th century modernists, who died almost a year ago to the day – 3 March 2011.

The Adès studies condense and refashion music from his acclaimed opera The Tempest into a single movement for four instruments. The result is a kaleidoscopic succession of musical portraits –each depicting a shipwrecked character on Prospero’s island – Antonio, Ferdinand, Alonso and Gonzalo.

Life, liberty and big, big tunes! Maybe it’s the raw energy, maybe it’s those swinging rhythms, maybe it’s the sense of ordinary folk doing extraordinary things, but there’s just something about American music and whether we’re hearing the plain-speaking pioneers of Aaron Copland’s Appalachia, or the high-kicking hustlers of Leonard Bernstein’s New York, it’s unmistakable.

Tis The Gift To Be Simple, Somewhere, Mambo!…you already know how they go. So join the BBC Philharmonic and conductor Yutaka Sado, and come share the American dream. As for Chopin’s dreamy First Piano Concerto, if you heard Nobuyuki Tsujii’s remarkable performances with us last season, you’ll already have experienced the almost magical way he communicates with an audience. Expect eloquence, expect fireworks, and expect some truly extraordinary chemistry as he tackles the most romantic concerto by the supreme keyboard poet.

Warwick Arts Centre and the Coull Quartet present Ping! Music vs Table Tennis, part of PRS for Music Foundation’s New Music 20×12 programme, celebrating the 2012 Cultural Olympiad and the Music Nation weekend.

Celebrating John Cage’s centennial year, and his innovation and philosophy, ENO is the first opera company to create, produce and present the composer’s ‘omnium gatherum’ piece. This exciting free event will take place as part of Music Nation, an official countdown event to the London Festival 2012.

In a promenade experience of spectacular and extraordinary performances throughout the London Coliseum, ENO's Musicircus will feature artists including Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and composer Michael Finnissy alongside ENO Music Director Edward Gardner, the ENO Community Choir, ENO Opera Works singers, and an intriguing collective of professional and amateur talents.

ENO's Musicircus is curated by award winning Proms-commissioned composer Stephen Montague. Montague worked with Cage in Europe for fifteen years, touring with him and premiering several of Cage's works. Visual artist Alex Julyan is Montague's long-term collaborator whose prior projects have included work with Punchdrunk and The Wellcome Trust.

Pianists Natalie Tsaldarakis and Panayotis Archontides, who form the husband-and-wife piano team Ivory Duo Piano Ensemble, will present a recital for piano four-hands at Blackheath Halls, London on Sunday 4 March, 2012.

The pianists boast many distinctions, including Panayotis’ Silver Medal of the Worshipful Company of Musicians 2007, and Natalie’s election to membership of the American National Music Honour Society in 1994. The ensemble has performed hundreds of acclaimed concerts in the UK and abroad in such venues as Sibelius Academy, Athenaeum Concert Hall, St-Martin-in-the-Fields, St James Piccadilly, St John’s Smith Square, Reform Club, Jacqueline du Pre Music Building (Oxford) etc. The duo has also been featured on Greek radio and TV, as well as on London’s Resonance FM (Sound Out with Carole Finer).

The Nash Ensemble, amongst our most frequent and welcome visitors over the years, return with a varied programme that highlights the versatility and range of this extraordinary ensemble’s repertoire – from the Horn Quintet, written for the Ensemble by our foremost composer James MacMillan, by way of Brahms at his most romantic to a pinnacle of Dvoøák’s chamber music, his glorious Piano Quintet.

The Ivernia Orchestra is an electrifying group of young Irish and UK musicians based in Manchester and from further afield, who have come together to perform works by Irish composers as part of Manchester’s Irish Festival 2012. All works have been composed within the past 30 years.

The UK premiere of a new opera takes a roller-coaster ride through life in the company of fate. Leading British opera composer Judith Weir transposes the Sicilian folktale Misfortune to today as the daughter of a rich family turns her back on wealth to make her own way in the world – too often with unfortunate results. Not many operas combine great music with breakdancing and a burning kebab van, but Miss Fortune does all this and more under the direction of Chen Shi-Zheng (his spectacular staging of Monkey: Journey to the West was presented at the Royal Opera House in 2008). This new, approachable and engaging opera had its premiere at the Bregenz Festival in summer 2011 and now comes to the Royal Opera stage with the same acclaimed cast – Emma Bell sings the title role and former Jette Parker Young Artist singer Jacques Imbrailo plays her eventual love Simon. Paul Daniel conducts this effective and atmospheric score in a visually beautiful and inventive production whose story is funny, touching, moral and contemporary. Miss Fortune continues the series of high-profile new works of recent years that have included Anna Nicole, The Tempest and The Minotaur. With the added impact of the world-class Royal Opera Chorus Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune is a highlight of this Royal Opera Season.

Richard Uttley began piano lessons at the age of nine. He studied with Ian Buckle at the Junior School of the Royal Northern College of Music before reading music at Clare College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a double first in Music in 2008. His dance-inspired programme contrasts the precision of Bach with the clarity and the deft colours of Debussy. Richard completed his Master’s of Performance (with Distinction) in September 2010 at the Guildhall School of Music in Drama in London, where he studied with Martin Roscoe.

Joseph Swensen returns to the SCO with one of the works that blew Scottish audiences away when he first performed it with the Orchestra over a decade ago. Since then he has spent time with the latest critical edition of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony and this new performance promises fresh insights but undiminished power. The programme is rich in possibilities, not least Sally Beamish’s hotly anticipated new concerto for the brilliant Colin Currie.

Brett Dean in conversation plus a performance by the composer of his Intimate Decisions for solo viola.
Various concerts during the day. Please visit:

http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/series.asp?id=968

There are a range of Total Immersion day passes available, which include admission to all events on Thursday 17 March and reflect the prices for tickets in the Barbican Hall. Total Immersion Day passes are not available to book online, but can be booked by calling the Box Office on 020 7638 8891 or in person.

Circus Tricks by Michael Henry & Adey Grummet is set in the spellbinding, fleeting world of the circus, where laughter is tragic, tears are hilarious and wonder both wrenches the heart and makes it soar!

The knife thrower’s assistant cannot stand the pain of her secret love for the knife thrower, an acrobat fights the world through the bottle, his brother struggles to catch him one more time, the trapeze artist is entranced by the pursuit of a single moment of weightlessness, the horse dreams of running in straight lines and the contortionist is just plain lonely.